How to Turn Down Sex

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Let's assume that you just don't want to. Let's assume you decide, as a preemptive move, to take all the blame. Let's say you claim exhaustion: You're worn out by world strife, you're lifelessly depressed about your wardrobe options for tomorrow's workday, you're spontaneously gay. None of this will matter. None of this will get you to bed within the next two to three hours. None of this will relieve you from the exhausting duties of reassuring your mate that she is thin and taut and muscular, but not so thin and taut and muscular that she looks like Jennifer Garner at her most pectorally mannish, but nor is she fat, and nor is she "texturally repulsive" in areas she cannot regularly inspect, nor is she boring, a nag, facially disfigured, too sarcastic, too career-centered, a poor listener, a negligent laundress, a pill. None of this will relieve you from reassuring her that many mutual acquaintances--best to cite them by name--would clamber to sleep with her, even if they were strapped to a hospital bed, with a feeding tube, hooked up to a breathing machine, essentially dead. Best, thus, in the interest of efficiency, to simply engineer the accidental bedside amputation of a non-essential digit and to bleed copiously and life-threateningly, but not on the sheets. Best, thus, to keep the hedge clippers under the bed, tucked inside an old slipper. --HEIDI JULAVITS